Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:55 am Post subject: I want to live in a foodscape

Carl Warner is a London-based photographer who makes foodscapes: landscapes made of food. Pea pod boat sails away from a land made of bread and potatoes, over a sea of salmon.

Scenes are photographed in layers from foreground to background, as the process is very time-consuming and the food quickly wilts under the lights.
Carl says: "Although I’m very hands-on, I do use model makers and food stylists to help me create the sets. I tend to start with a drawing which I sketch out in order to get the composition worked out”
The images can take up to two or three days to build and photograph and then a couple of days retouching and fine-tuning them to blend together all the elements, such as parmesan cliffs with sweet potato boulders and cress and savoy cabbage foliage under a red cabbage sky. To give a realistic 3-D feel to the photos, each still life is composed on an 8 foot by 4 foot table. The foreground is only about 2 feet across.
Carl spends a lot of time planning each image before shooting in order to choose the best ingredients to replicate larger scale shapes and forms within nature.
He spends a lot of time staring at vegetables in supermarkets, which can make him seem a little odd. However, finding the right shaped broccoli to use for a tree is an all-important task.
Carl says: "Although there is a fair amount of waste, there is a lot of food left over which is always shared out with the team, though most of the food used in the sets have either been superglued or pinned, and neither of these makes for good eating.” Carl shoots the scenes using a Hasselblad H3D39 and retouches them on a Mac in his London studio.
He cites as his influences the photographer Ansel Adams and films such as The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
My favourite is this underwater cave scene, complete with carrot stalactites, a pea pod boat, and sealife made of exotic fruits, cauliflower and broccoli. Carl hopes to produce a book in the future, reasoning that it would appeal to lovers of both food and art.

Carl Warner is a London-based photographer who makes foodscapes: landscapes made of food. Pea pod boat sails away from a land made of bread and potatoes, over a sea of salmon.

Scenes are photographed in layers from foreground to background, as the process is very time-consuming and the food quickly wilts under the lights.
Carl says: "Although I’m very hands-on, I do use model makers and food stylists to help me create the sets. I tend to start with a drawing which I sketch out in order to get the composition worked out”
The images can take up to two or three days to build and photograph and then a couple of days retouching and fine-tuning them to blend together all the elements, such as parmesan cliffs with sweet potato boulders and cress and savoy cabbage foliage under a red cabbage sky. To give a realistic 3-D feel to the photos, each still life is composed on an 8 foot by 4 foot table. The foreground is only about 2 feet across.
Carl spends a lot of time planning each image before shooting in order to choose the best ingredients to replicate larger scale shapes and forms within nature.
He spends a lot of time staring at vegetables in supermarkets, which can make him seem a little odd. However, finding the right shaped broccoli to use for a tree is an all-important task.
Carl says: "Although there is a fair amount of waste, there is a lot of food left over which is always shared out with the team, though most of the food used in the sets have either been superglued or pinned, and neither of these makes for good eating.” Carl shoots the scenes using a Hasselblad H3D39 and retouches them on a Mac in his London studio.
He cites as his influences the photographer Ansel Adams and films such as The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
My favourite is this underwater cave scene, complete with carrot stalactites, a pea pod boat, and sealife made of exotic fruits, cauliflower and broccoli. Carl hopes to produce a book in the future, reasoning that it would appeal to lovers of both food and art.

I guess many of us would like to live there because it is a delicious place. I would eat cookies all day.